Alyosha's Speech

I have decided to move to Indiana to attend the Earlham School of Religion. Part of me still doesn't believe that I've made that decision. And I don't think I fully have, yet. But I am trusting that, for some reason unknown to me, the Lord is guiding me there.

Before last week, I was planning on staying in San Diego. But when the school told me that I was accepted, I did not expect to feel such joy at the thought that maybe God was opening doors for me to attend. Now, a week later, my eyes are fixed on Indiana.

It isn't going to be easy to leave. At the same time, I'm excited for the road ahead. I will be studying writing and ministry there, and I'll also get to be with my good friend Dylan, one of my best friends from high school and my favorite drummer in the rock band Pasifire.

I was talking with my dad tonight, and something in our conversation reminded me of Alyosha's farewell speech in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I began reading that book when I first moved into the Redemption House and finished it almost two years later, around the same time I was moving out. Alyosha's speech to the the boys of his neighborhood isn't the same speech I would give the people I have befriended, people through whom Christ gave me life, but the emotion is similar, so I wanted to share it.

"Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact, here, at Ilusha's stone that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honour and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune--still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. . . . You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. . . .

"Let us be, first and above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll never forget one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two! You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me!"

straddler (poem)

between poem and song,
land and sea

between cliff and river,
the decision to leap

between here and there
and you and me

between midnight and morning,
doorways out of dreams

between decisions and revisions,
what i want and what i think

between boy and man
at the river's rising

between instinct and grace
and who we come to be,

always i'll be straddling.

Grace

Tonight my family watched the movie "The Tree of Life." I liked it a lot, and it is a lot to chew on. The movie seemed to be, at least partly, about the life we receive in and through grace and forgiveness. The movie's exploration of grace reminded me of a short story called "Babette's Feast" by Isak Dinesen, especially the following passage:

"Man, my friends," said General Loewenhielm, "is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble. . . " Never till now had the General stated that he trembled; he was genuinely surprised and even shocked at hearing his own voice proclaim the fact. "We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!"

Sunrise over Green Canyon (poem)

The dawn draws a long yawn of yarn along the canyons of my room,
a strong comet on the southern wall,
a freefall. It starts out small, horizon-like
and becomes a lawn of ocean glow
beneath a starry sky.
The sky is white paint pushed up into a corner, gray heights;
the stars are donut sprinkles scattered
in the fog of reflected light.

Foam (haikus)

In this blue sweater,
my chest is muffled, heavy
beneath the spring sky.

Eucalyptus leaves
whisper poems like wind chimes
behind a bird's song.

The white Nissan truck
and the navy blue Honda
reflect the June sun.

The spring sky clears out
the fleet of clouds; the ocean
clings onto its foam.

The birds' songs follow
a night of vacant dreaming;
I forget them both.

The June sun beckons
me outside, where I will hear
birdsong in spring skies.